With every passing day, the weather is getting just a little nicer and the days a littler longer. That means only one thing: Full-fledged golf season is just around the corner.
It's crazy how much I've grown to love golf. I jones for golf. If I miss even a week, I'm craving to hit the course. I think about golf while lying awake in bed. To paraphrase Christopher Walken: I've got a fever, and the only cure if a 9 iron.
I wish that decades ago I would have known how I was going to feel about the sport one day. I would have started playing earlier on, or at least paying more attention to the game back in those years in preparation for one day being so enthusiastic about playing.
Learning the finer points of golf has been a very similar experience for me as learning the finer points of playing guitar. I've been enthralled and captivated by music since I can remember when. It's been a huge, huge part of my life in so many regards. It's been a bridge for a lot of relationships that I share with a very eclectic group of people. Simply put, music has been a passion I can't imagine not existing in my life.
Yet, for as much as I thought that I understood about music and for as much as I cherished listening and reading about and talking about music, it wasn't until I learned to play guitar that I believe I really understood and cherished music. Hearing music and playing music are two entirely different entities, but they intertwine completely. When you're able to combine both, you're immediately taken to another level. I'm not saying for even an instant that I'm good at playing music. I am saying that being able to do so, even in a rudimentary manner, gives you insight you can't possible have if you're unable to knowledgeably pick a note.
Being able to play music enables you to hear music in new and far greater ways. You recognize subtle nuisances you couldn't before. You recognize patterns that weren't available to your thought process previously. You may have read about them, but you couldn't apply them or understand their origins and see how they fit with other patterns. I think more than anything, however, being able to play music gives you a far greater appreciation for those who do it exceptionally well. I always knew Clapton and Hendrix and Djanjo Reinhart were frickin' good at their craft, but when I started trying to hammer out even something as elementary as "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on six strings, I realized just how elevated they were.
The same has been true for golf. I played the game a few times in high school and during my 20s, but the game was so difficult and seemed so inaccessible that I never bothered to take it seriously or consider it a pastime that I was ever going to really actively take part in. Growing up, there was far greater stigma attached to golf, as well. It seemed an elitist sport that was accessible for only a certain segment of the population, and I didn't consider myself a member of that group. For that reason, I never bother to look much past the stereotypes. I never necessarily found golf boring or tedious like some people do, but I didn't consider it all that demanding physically, and I definitely didn't appreciate how mentally taxing it is. Much as with the guitar, I didn't give golf its due respect until I started playing it consistently and the bug dug his teeth into me hard and deep.
Learning to play golf and guitar is humbling. You don't just get good overnight. You have to dedicate yourself to practice, and you have to have the discipline to keep returning even when the results you're after don't seen anywhere near becoming reality. Much like guitar, in the sense that I thought I knew a lot about music, I thought golf would come easy when I started playing it consistently. I was wrong. I wouldn't characterize myself as having been a great athlete, but I think I was above average. Sports always came pretty easily, and I could pick up skills pretty quickly. Not with golf, though. I knew what I was supposed to do; I just couldn't always execute it. Same with guitar. I could see where my fingers were supposed to go and know the strings I was supposed to pluck and when, I just couldn't do it smoothly or with grace early on.
Fortunately, though, I've always been of the mindset that learning a skill and becoming competent at it shouldn't be easy. Learning a craft, whether it's quilting or cooking or painting or carving wooden figures out of sticks should require some toil and sweat and frustration, otherwise everyone would be doing it. I've always been a competitive person, and being humbled in my pursuit to learn the to play the game of golf and play songs on guitar weren't easy pills to force down. I'm thankful (and even a little proud of myself) for sticking it out.
Today, I can't think of two other pastimes that I get more joy out of than golf and guitar. Besides being outdoors for hours at a time and challenging myself to do better than the time before, golf is a fantastic avenue for socializing. I tend to play with the same people, and I enjoy being in their company. I look forward to the early Sunday mornings when I rise before everyone else in the house, head out on mostly empty roads to the course, and commence to chase balls around all the while catching up on life with truly good people. Guitar is a more of a personal experience. It's an escape from everyone and everything. But it's fulfilling in many of the same ways.
Now is the time of March. The grass will soon turn green. The trees will bud and grow leaves. The birds will sing. The rain will fall. And soon I'll be three-putting for another bogey and cursing at myself but enjoying every second.
It's crazy how much I've grown to love golf. I jones for golf. If I miss even a week, I'm craving to hit the course. I think about golf while lying awake in bed. To paraphrase Christopher Walken: I've got a fever, and the only cure if a 9 iron.
I wish that decades ago I would have known how I was going to feel about the sport one day. I would have started playing earlier on, or at least paying more attention to the game back in those years in preparation for one day being so enthusiastic about playing.
Learning the finer points of golf has been a very similar experience for me as learning the finer points of playing guitar. I've been enthralled and captivated by music since I can remember when. It's been a huge, huge part of my life in so many regards. It's been a bridge for a lot of relationships that I share with a very eclectic group of people. Simply put, music has been a passion I can't imagine not existing in my life.
Yet, for as much as I thought that I understood about music and for as much as I cherished listening and reading about and talking about music, it wasn't until I learned to play guitar that I believe I really understood and cherished music. Hearing music and playing music are two entirely different entities, but they intertwine completely. When you're able to combine both, you're immediately taken to another level. I'm not saying for even an instant that I'm good at playing music. I am saying that being able to do so, even in a rudimentary manner, gives you insight you can't possible have if you're unable to knowledgeably pick a note.
Being able to play music enables you to hear music in new and far greater ways. You recognize subtle nuisances you couldn't before. You recognize patterns that weren't available to your thought process previously. You may have read about them, but you couldn't apply them or understand their origins and see how they fit with other patterns. I think more than anything, however, being able to play music gives you a far greater appreciation for those who do it exceptionally well. I always knew Clapton and Hendrix and Djanjo Reinhart were frickin' good at their craft, but when I started trying to hammer out even something as elementary as "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on six strings, I realized just how elevated they were.
The same has been true for golf. I played the game a few times in high school and during my 20s, but the game was so difficult and seemed so inaccessible that I never bothered to take it seriously or consider it a pastime that I was ever going to really actively take part in. Growing up, there was far greater stigma attached to golf, as well. It seemed an elitist sport that was accessible for only a certain segment of the population, and I didn't consider myself a member of that group. For that reason, I never bother to look much past the stereotypes. I never necessarily found golf boring or tedious like some people do, but I didn't consider it all that demanding physically, and I definitely didn't appreciate how mentally taxing it is. Much as with the guitar, I didn't give golf its due respect until I started playing it consistently and the bug dug his teeth into me hard and deep.
Learning to play golf and guitar is humbling. You don't just get good overnight. You have to dedicate yourself to practice, and you have to have the discipline to keep returning even when the results you're after don't seen anywhere near becoming reality. Much like guitar, in the sense that I thought I knew a lot about music, I thought golf would come easy when I started playing it consistently. I was wrong. I wouldn't characterize myself as having been a great athlete, but I think I was above average. Sports always came pretty easily, and I could pick up skills pretty quickly. Not with golf, though. I knew what I was supposed to do; I just couldn't always execute it. Same with guitar. I could see where my fingers were supposed to go and know the strings I was supposed to pluck and when, I just couldn't do it smoothly or with grace early on.
Fortunately, though, I've always been of the mindset that learning a skill and becoming competent at it shouldn't be easy. Learning a craft, whether it's quilting or cooking or painting or carving wooden figures out of sticks should require some toil and sweat and frustration, otherwise everyone would be doing it. I've always been a competitive person, and being humbled in my pursuit to learn the to play the game of golf and play songs on guitar weren't easy pills to force down. I'm thankful (and even a little proud of myself) for sticking it out.
Today, I can't think of two other pastimes that I get more joy out of than golf and guitar. Besides being outdoors for hours at a time and challenging myself to do better than the time before, golf is a fantastic avenue for socializing. I tend to play with the same people, and I enjoy being in their company. I look forward to the early Sunday mornings when I rise before everyone else in the house, head out on mostly empty roads to the course, and commence to chase balls around all the while catching up on life with truly good people. Guitar is a more of a personal experience. It's an escape from everyone and everything. But it's fulfilling in many of the same ways.
Now is the time of March. The grass will soon turn green. The trees will bud and grow leaves. The birds will sing. The rain will fall. And soon I'll be three-putting for another bogey and cursing at myself but enjoying every second.
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